Digital Commons Network^™

Ghostly Entanglements: Exposing Temporal Matter(Ing)S In Social Studies Education With (Re)Photography, Bretton A. Varga

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Visual resources offer a variety of pedagogical advantages. Regardless of content, images can be leveraged to build critically analytical skills and used to cultivate dialogic literacies (i.e., articulations of thinking) about the social world. Further, images can be used to introduce and grapple with complex/abstract ideas. Given the relationship that social studies has to temporality (i.e., subjective engagements with the past, present, and future), visual resources also present teacher(s) (educators) with the opportunity to explore (theoretical) concepts foregrounding manifold relationships making up the social world (i.e., a world consisting of complex entanglements between non/human entities).

The purpose of this research …

Identification Of Patterns And Disruptions In Ambient Sensor Data From Private Homes, Yan Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The world’s population is rapidly aging and the increasing demand for home and health care services from this aging population brings unprecedented challenges to the economy and society. Ambient-assisted smart homes, residences equipped with ambient sensors to monitor the resident’s daily activities in a continuous and unobtrusive way, present great potential to manage the growing care service needs of this older population segment, and enable them to age-in-place.

Despite growing research, using ambient sensor data from private homes to monitor daily activities, health and wellness still faces significant challenges. To study ambient sensor data from private homes where annotated data …

Design Of Support Measures For Counting Frequent Patterns In Graphs, Jinghan Meng

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the popularity of graph datasets has grown rapidly. Frequent subgraph mining (FSM) from graphs becomes an important subject in computer science research. In this dissertation, we study single-graph as an effective model to represent information and its related graph mining techniques. In frequent pattern mining in a single-graph setting, there are two main problems: support measure and search scheme. We study the development of support measures, which are basically functions that map a pattern to its frequency count in a database. Our work is based on the hypergraph framework using the concept of occurrence/instance hypergraphs. We present …

Breakthroughs In Obtaining Qm/Mm Free Energies, Phillip S. Hudson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The computation of free energy is pivotal to understanding the fundamental nature of chemical phenomena. That is, whether a specific molecular outcome occurs spontaneously or is inherently unfavorable. The need to do this with consistent accuracy begs for the use of quantum mechanical (QM) methods. However, techniques for directly computing free energy differences with QM or mixed QM/MM methods are untenable, as the computational expense is quite exorbitant. At present, the most feasible approach for obtaining QM/MM free energies is employing the so-called indirect cycle, which relies on accurately computing free energy differences between low (e.g., molecular mechanical, MM) and …

Service Provisioning And Security Design In Software Defined Networks, Mohamed Rahouti

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructures and systems are being widely deployed to support a broad range of users and application scenarios. A key trend here is the emergence of many different "smart" technology paradigms along with an increasingly diverse array of networked sensors, e.g., for smart homes and buildings, intelligent transportation and autonomous systems, emergency response, remote health monitoring and telehealth, etc. As billions of these devices come online, ICT networks are being tasked with transferring increasing volumes of data to support intelligent real-time decision making and management. Indeed, many applications and services will have very stringent Quality of …

Simulation And Verification Of Phase Change Materials For Thermal Energy Storage, Marwan Mosubah Belaed

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have a global impact on world economies and the ecosystem. Scientific assessment of GHG emissions is an issue that requires immediate action from key decision-makers and influencers. A comprehensive review of the impact of climate change and its dire consequences on daily life is illustrated in this dissertation. The most common technique to lower GHG emissions in the atmosphere is by switching GHG emission sources to zero-emission sources such as solar energy, wind energy, bioenergy, and geothermal power. Recently, all these technologies have made significant progress in lowering capital operation costs and their cycle efficiencies. This …

Investigation Of Navigation Systems For Size, Cost, And Mass Constrained Satellites, Omar Awad

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The feasibility of using radically inexpensive micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) technology for navigation of a nanosatellite is investigated with a focus on attitude estimation. Typically, larger satellites are equipped with star cameras, sun sensors, or Earth horizon sensors for attitude estimation. These sensors can provide very accurate attitude measurements. A nanosatellite is highly size, power, and cost constrained and cannot readily accommodate these sensors. Our mission is to design, build, and operate a radically inexpensive nanosatellite system. While there is no consensus on what constitutes a "radically inexpensive" satellite, our goal is a maximum cost of $10,000 per unit. This precludes …

Climate Change And Liberation In Latin America, Ernesto O. Hernández

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to propose the liberation movements in Latin America as alternative philosophical frameworks to the crisis of climate change. These movements have provided the grounds to identify inequities and injustices and have practiced ethical methodologies to overcome them. Additionally, the movements seek to represent and reflect the value of non-traditional philosophical agents in Latin America. The work focuses on four major Latin American ecological liberation movements; theology, philosophy, pedagogy, and feminism. Eco-Theology advances the role of Religion as the practice of Religação, reexamination, and resetting our relationship with nature by reconnecting with it. Eco-Philosophy of …

Growth And Characterization Of 2d Layered Materials, Algene Fryer Ii

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

2D layered materials are becoming an important area of research due to their exceptional electrical and optical properties. Specifically, 2D layered monochalcogenides are known for their high carrier motilities, whereas layered metal halides have been shown to have noteworthy photoresponsivity. Despite the assortment of 2D layered materials, the search for reliable and scalable synthesis methods is still a challenge in this family of materials. Often a certain growth technique will compromise a desirable trait needed for further fabrication, such as the quality of the crystal or its coverage on a substrate. In this study, two growth techniques that incorporate changeable …

School District Responses To Food Insecurity And Poor Nutrition In High Poverty Communities, Richard Grayes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Food insecure households are described as not having enough money or other resources to meet certain needs of all of their family members at some point during the year. Milam and Towns (2014) observed, “Child hunger exists in every county in every state” (p. 2). The hunger gap has been found to contribute to the lower academic achievement of students of color, particularly those from low-socioeconomic status (Jyoti, Frongillo, & Jones, 2005).

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of food insecurity and poor nutrition on student learning and to review district responses, particularly in elementary schools …

Keyless Anti-Jamming Communication Via Randomized Dsss, Ahmad Alagil

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nowadays, wireless networking is ubiquitous. In wireless communication systems, multiple nodes exchange data during the transmission time. Due to the natural use of the communication channel, it is crucial to protect the physical layer to make wireless channels between nodes more reliable. Jamming attacks consider one of the most significant threats on wireless communication. Spread spectrum techniques have been widely used to mitigate the effects of the jammer. Traditional anti-jamming approaches like Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) and Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) require a sender and a receiver to share a secret key prior to their communication. If this …

Artificial Intelligence Towards The Wireless Channel Modeling Communications In 5g, Saud Mobark Aldossari

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Channel prediction is a mathematical predicting of the natural propagation of the signal that helps the receiver to approximate the affected signal, which plays an important role in highly mobile or dynamic channels. The standard wireless communication channel modeling can be facilitated by either deterministic or stochastic channel methodologies. The deterministic approach is based on the electromagnetic theories and every single object in that environment has to be known in that propagation space and an example of this method is ray tracing. While the stochastic modeling method is based on measurements that involve statistical distributions of the channel parameters and …

Does Hedging Success Matter? An Empirical Study Of Jet Fuel Hedging In The U.S. Airline Industry, Brian Hornung

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Airlines commonly employ hedging as a risk management strategy to protect themselves against sudden, unpredictable increases in the price of jet fuel. In a seminal paper by Carter, Rogers, and Simkins (2006), it is established that jet fuel hedging by airlines increases the firm value of the airline. This dissertation replicates their study using an expanded dataset over a greater period of time. This study finds a smaller “hedging premium” than Carter, Rogers, and Simkins (2006). It is shown that the leasing of aircraft plays an important role in the relationship between the hedging premium and capital expenditures.

The measure …

The Evolution Of Esea: A Language And Four-Dimension Analysis, Ann M. Meggs

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Title I of ESEA was and continues to be the largest single funding source to support our nation’s most struggling students (Davis, 1999). The purpose of this study was to draw on policy and language analysis perspectives to examine changes in ESEA, specifically in Title I Part A, through its reauthorizations as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). A language analysis of the texts of these acts found changes in key specific language between each reauthorization, affecting the intent and scope of the original ESEA (1965) legislation. Four dimensions of a conceptual …

Post-Overlay Flexible Pavement Performance Modeling And Its Application In Sustainable Asphalt Overlay Policy Making, Chunfu Xin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Highway pavement is a critical component of the highway transportation infrastructure. After the construction of a pavement system, pavement condition will deteriorate over time due to a combination effect of material aging, traffic loading, and environmental impact. To restore the pavement performance and to reduce its adverse effects on public users and environment, asphalt overlay activities are conducted frequently during the service life of a pavement. As a key component that bridges the overlay policies with future pavement performance, economic cost and environmental impact, the forecast accuracy of post-overlay pavement performance model is extremely important. However, most of previous studies …

Rapid Cross-Section Imaging With Magnetic And Impedance Sensors For Grout Anomaly Detection In External Post-Tensioned Tendons, Hani Freij

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Post-tensioned (PT) bridges have had severe corrosion issues with tendons that fail suddenly without prior notice. The corrosion of external post-tensioned tendons has been associated with grout deficiencies/anomalies from inadequate grouting. Deficiencies include voids, regions of chalky low strength grout, and regions where excessive water content or even free water is present. In those zones mechanical bonding of strand to the grout is degraded and, of more concern, the strand steel risks corrosion failure reducing the expected lifespan of the structure. As tendons are critical structural components, it is important to detect those deficiencies during inspection preferably by a cross …

New Synthetic Methodology Using Base-Assisted Diazonium Salts Activation And Gold Redox Catalysis, Abiola Azeez Jimoh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past two decades, homogeneous Au(I) catalysis has been a valuable synthetic tool for activating a series of unsaturated carbon-carbon bonds towards nucleophilic attack. Despite this progress, Au(I/III) redox chemistry has not been well explored. This is largely due to the challenges associated with the high oxidation potential of gold. Hence, the need for an efficient and safe method for Au oxidation.

Herein, a base-assisted diazonium salt activation has been used to facilitate Au redox reactions under mild reaction conditions. This oxidative coupling method afforded functional isoxazolines with good to excellent yields, while the alternative photoactivation method provided trace …

Composition Of Atomic-Obligation Security Policies, Danielle Ferguson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There has been significant work to date on policy-specification languages that allow specification of arbitrary obligations, but there continues to exist open challenges in the composition of these arbitrary obligations, especially when obligations can be complex (i.e. consist more than one action). There are currently no solutions that allow complete and automatic resolution of conflicts between policies and other policies' obligations or that allow policies to react to the complex obligations of other policies. In particular, there is minimal work that considers the benefits and challenges of allowing complex obligations that operate in an atomic fashion, that is that execute …

Models Of Secure Software Enforcement And Development, Hernan M. Palombo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Computer Security has been a pressing issue that affects our society in multiple ways. Although a plethora of security solutions have been proposed and implemented throughout the years, security continues to be a problem for at least two important reasons, (1) implementations of runtime enforcement mechanisms have not been modeled rigorously and thus may not be enforcing the policies that are expected to enforce, and (2) there are conflicting tensions in the software development process that hinder the implementation and maintenance of secure software. To investigate these issues, this dissertation is divided into two parts.

The first part of this …

Complexities Of Data, Tasks And Workflows In Health It Management, Gaurav Jetley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on three key aspects in health IT management: (1) Complexities in the collection of health data in electronic health record (EHR) systems and the use of EHR data in research, (2) Complexities of collaboration between physicians and AI for improving healthcare delivery, and (3) Complexities of workflows and collaborations between healthcare organization (HCO) staff during the delivery of care. The first dissertation essay (Chapter 1) examines the key data quality issues that arise in recorded health information in EHR systems, provides quality thresholds that the data needs to meet for mitigating errors and increasing reproducibility of downstream …

Developing Agent-Based Models To Study Financial Markets, Saurav Chakraborty

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents research that employs agent-based modelling to provide a framework to support simulation as a complement to traditional economic models for policy evaluation. It consists of three studies. The first study employs cluster analysis to capture the different types of banks and the associated business models that define their decision-making. The results from study one will help us get an understanding of how different banks behave and provide an insight into their lending practices. Hence, it would be very helpful in evaluating and analyzing the impact of future policies. Study two develops a fine-grained interbank lending model based …

Making Meaning Of A Whole School Transformation Model: A Policy Ethnography Of A Schools Of Hope Legislation Implementation, Adam Charles Rea

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cheryl High School (CHS) is a geographically large county in Florida that received funding through the state of Florida's "Schools of Hope” grant. The grant’s parameters called on Carter County Schools (CCS) to partner with an external consultant and a research university to help improve teacher and school administrative capacity. The district chose Scientific Pedagogy Services (SPS) and to continue their existing relationship with Tampa Bay State University (TBS). The consultant’s mission was to improve school performance through a unique form of professional development. TBS was charged with developing an on-site program that funded staff efforts to obtain advanced degrees …

Game Theory Approaches For Transportation Problems, Mahdi Takalloo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation considers three separate game theory problems in transportation. In the first problem, a combinatorial auction market has been proposed for fractional ownership of autonomous vehicles. The proposed combinatorial auction has two unique features. First, the items are continuous time slots defined by bidders and second, the spatial information of bidders has been incorporated so that sharing becomes a viable plan. A conflict-based formulation of the winner determination problem has been proposed, for which an effective solution approach based on a heuristic and a maximal-clique based relaxation has been presented. The second part of the dissertation examines a pessimistic …

Functional Object-Oriented Network: A Knowledge Representation For Service Robotics, David Andrés Paulius Ramos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we discuss our work behind the development of the functional object-oriented network (abbreviated as FOON), a graphical knowledge representation for robotic manipulation and understanding of its own actions and (potentially) the intentions of humans in the household. Based on the theory of affordance, this representation captures manipulations and their effects on actions through the coupling of object and motion nodes as fundamental learning units known as functional units. The activities currently represented in FOON are cooking related, but this representation can be extended to other activities that involve manipulation of objects which result in observable changes of …

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Exposure, Hepatic Accumulation, And Associated Health Impacts In Gulf Of Mexico Tilefish (Lopholatilus Chamaeleonticeps), Susan M. Snyder

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, systematic demersal longline surveys were conducted throughout the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) continental shelf to evaluate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) exposure, hepatic accumulation, and health indices in demersal fishes. Tilefish (Lopholatilus chamaeleonticeps) were chosen as a target species due to high vulnerability to environmental disturbance, commercial importance, Gulf-wide distribution, and documented high exposure to PAHs post-Deepwater Horizon. Over 200 Tilefish were sampled in the north central GoM at repeat stations from 2012 to 2017, and from the northwest GoM, southwest GoM, Bay of Campeche, and Yucatán Shelf over years 2015 and 2016. Tilefish …

Fields Brook Superfund Site: Race, Class, And Environmental Justice In A Blasted Landscape, Richard C. Bargielski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 1980, the United States Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). This federal law provided the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with the legal tools necessary to pursue polluters who had improperly stored or disposed hazardous wastes. Since its passage, more than a thousand sites have been added to the National Priorities List (NPL), but only a fraction have been cleaned up. Proponents of neoliberalism argue that aggressive environmental policies such as CERCLA harm workers by making it impossible for businesses to operate profitably. This coincides with a drop of nearly 50% in the U.S. …

Development Of A Monolithic Implantable Neural Interface From Cubic Silicon Carbide And Evaluation Of Its Mri Compatibility, Mohammad Beygi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

One of the main issues with micron-sized intracortical neural interfaces (INIs) is their long-term reliability, with one major factor stemming from device material failure caused by the heterogeneous integration of multiple materials used to realize the implant. Single crystalline cubic silicon carbide (3C-SiC) is a semiconductor material that has been long recognized for its mechanical robustness and chemical inertness. It has the benefit of demonstrated biocompatibility, which makes it a promising candidate for chronically-stable, implantable INIs. In the first section of this dissertation, the fabrication and initial electrochemical characterization of a monolithic, Michigan-style 3C-SiC microelectrode array (MEA) probe is reported. …

Large Thecosome Pteropods Of The Northern Gulf Of Mexico: Species Abundance, Spatial And Vertical Distribution With A Temporal Comparison Of Shell Thickness, Sarah M. Shedler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Large thecosome pteropods have a significant role in the pelagic ecosystem of the northern Gulf of Mexico (GoM). This research analyzed species abundances, vertical and horizontal distributions, and trends in shell thickness between 2011 and 2015. Pteropod samples were collected following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill by two midwater sampling programs: the Offshore Nekton Sampling and Analysis Program (ONSAP, 2011) and the Deep Pelagic Nekton Dynamics of the Gulf of Mexico (DEEPEND, 2015). All samples were collected using a 10-m2 Multiple Opening/Closing Net and Environmental Sensing System (MOC10) midwater trawl, with 3-mm mesh size. This gear sampled five discrete …

Design Of Delro Autonomous Delivery Robot And Ai Based Localization, Tolga Karakurt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Autonomous robots are employed in numerous areas. In this thesis, it is proposed to design and build a self-controlled wheeled vehicle to deliver food.

As there are many applications of an autonomous agent for indoor and outdoor environments, this study is conducted on indoor settings whereas all the requirements and design processes are achieved for both operational boundaries.

The fundamental approach is to design and implement a Wheeled Mobile Robot (WMR), and to test skid-steering performance on proposed trajectories using a System Engineering approach. From this point of view, system requirements in mechanical, electrical, and software are evaluated, and overall …

Novel Bit-Sliced In-Memory Computing Based Vlsi Architecture For Fast Sobel Edge Detection In Iot Edge Devices, Rajeev Joshi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For today’s Internet-of-Things (IoT) edge devices, there is an acute need for fast and power-efficient hardware for an image processing task. Traditional hardware solutions with sequential and/or pipelined architectures incur high latency and power. This motivates us to propose a novel in-memory computing architecture for rapid image processing. We propose a bit-sliced in-memory computing architecture for CMOS VLSI implementation for fast Sobel edge detection. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to propose in-memory computing based VLSI architecture foredge detection. The novelty of the proposed work is that one image can be processed in constant time …